Part 4: The arrival

When we last saw our brave heroine, she was contracting and writhing and screaming and cursing – and swearing to all gods both heathen and holy that she would never do this again.

She had also asked the midwife on several occasions whether she could start pushing – a request that was continuously denied since a) her cervix had not yet fully dilated, and b) the baby had wriggled his way around to the posterior position, which is not optimal for delivery. It was due to this second factor that Julie had – three or four hours into labour – been administered with a small dose of pethidine, which would hopefully relax things just enough for the bub to reposition himself ready for launch. Around 9 pm the midwife told us that this seemed to have finally occurred – and since Julie’s cervix was now roughly the width of a grapefruit*, we were also informed that the pushing could now begin.

All sorts of things started happening at this stage, which I will probably not be able to fully digest without years of therapy – or at least, until I have completed writing my script for the B-grade horror film ‘It Came From Out Of My Wife’. I studied this stuff in my undergraduate degree, and have a fairly good understanding of what goes on down there – but until it is happening to your beloved, you cannot possibly grasp the enormity of the situation. Thanks to the policy of inclusiveness our midwife** had towards the father’s role in childbirth, I was a participant-observer in the whole show.

And so, about an hour-and-a-half later – after much pushing, screaming, twisting, kicking, bearing-down, crowning, bleeding and stretching – we finally met our son.

As soon as he was delivered, he was placed on Julie’s chest for a cuddle and a scream, and we got to share our first few moments together as a family. The obstetrician then handed me some scissors and offered me a lengthy piece of calamari, which I thanked him for but declined, since I had eaten not long ago. Once my misapprehension had been pointed out, I cut the umbilical cord and symbolically set the next generation loose on the world.

* It is often difficult for men to fully appreciate what happens to a woman during childbirth, so allow me to share this analogy: To allow for passage of the baby, the cervix stretches to 10 cm, or 100 mm. It is normally about 2-3 mm wide. This is about the same size as the urethra. So guys, imagine ‘things’ stretching to the point that you could wee baseballs.

** … and the hospital in general, it must be said. Mitcham Private has a fantastic attitude to childbirth and fathers. I really appreciated the fact that they included me in everything, and never once treated me as excess baggage.